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Two of 2014’s most controversial books – Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys – will go head to head in an attempt to become the Financial Times’s 10th business book of the year.

The Longlist

View the longlist of books selected from more than 300 titles entered for the 2014 prize.

Other longlisted books stirring up debate are Hack Attack, Nick Davies’s investigation of the impact of the UK phone-hacking scandal on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, and The Glass Closet, Lord Browne’s analysis of why lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender staff still feel compelled to hide their sexuality at work – as the former BP chief did.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have also created waves with The Second Machine Age about the promise of new technology. Walter Isaacson makes the longlist with The Innovators, out in October, on the people behind the digital revolution. Julia Angwin looks at the dark side of data in Dragnet Nation.

Entrepreneurial and man­agement insights are offered by Creativity, Inc, Ed Catmull’s memo for managers from inside Pix­ar, the animation studio he co-founded, and by venture capitalist Ben Horowitz in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, on how to build a business. These titles are complemented by Daniel Schulman’s sweeping history of the Koch corporate dyn­asty, Sons of Wichita.

The causes and consequences of the financial crisis continue to pre­occupy authors. Ian Fraser takes another look at what went wrong at Royal Bank of Scotland in Shredded. Fragile by Design, by Charles Calomiris and Stephen Haber, seeks the roots of the banking crisis. Atif Mian and Amir Sufi examine the causes of the recession in House of Debt, while Diane Coyle’s GDP offers “a brief but affectionate history” of the much misunderstood economic measure.

The list is completed by Howard French’s reportage on the growing Chinese presence in Africa, China’s Second Continent, and The Boom by Russell Gold, about the pros and cons of fracking for gas.

The judges of the award will select a shortlist of up to six finalists on September 24. The £30,000 prize will be awarded on November 11.

Covers

Book Titles

Author/s

Publisher & Publication Date

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Thomas Piketty

Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press, April 2014

China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

Howard W. French

Alfred A. Knopf, May 2014

Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration